In Bruges 1

So, I'm not gonna lie, the only reason I came here is because I thought it would be hilarious to tell Gazman I was In Bruges. But to back that up people told me that you can still get all the amazing food and beer here but it is a nice wee town compared to Brussels. Plus it was only 9 euro a night to get here and cheaper (and nicer as it turns out) accommodation as well.

No train problems getting here either.

Even though it was a bit of a walk to get from the station to the hostel I decided it would be OK if I did some sight seeing on the way. So I found this for Gaz:

I was going all good with my navigation until I got to a canal intersection and then it was all a cock up, I couldn't figure it out at all, but didn't want to use my normal method of "forge on until you find a familiar street name" as I would be potentially find myself stranded on the opposite side of the canal to the hostel. When I had just about employed that strategy anyway, a girl came up and asked if I knew where I was going. I really must have looked really lost. Turns out she knew where the hostel was because she was staying there too. We had a yarn on the way to the hostel and decided to go hunting some food together after I had checked in. For dinner I had another very good creamy thing with delicious beetroot on the side dish. I then suggested we go check out this wacky place that was on the Use It guide for Bruges. We got so much more than we bargained for. I won't put too many details here as the guide said it was one of the last secret gems of Bruges so I'll tell you more if you ever go there. We went to a building with permanent scaffolding (much to the disgust of the local council) and rang the doorbell. An extremely eccentric, "self-proclaimed vampire" came to greet us, he took us through a couple of corridors to a bar that was festooned with all kind of wacky stuff. Hopefully I can get some photos off Stephanie cos it was a sight to behold. It was one of the weirdest places I have been, but there was an old dude there that played the piano like a maniac and two busker brothers from Brazil that played some cool music. Unfortunately there was also a loud obnoxious American too so that dragged the place down a peg or two. It was quite an experience. I drank one very alcoholic rum cocktail (pretty much all they sold) and we went for a wander around the city. But this was a wander with a purpose: Stephanies grandfather has a ~30 year old painting of a scene in Bruge. Apparently 20 years ago he found the scene so we set out to find it again. We searched high and we searched low for about 2 hours but to no avail, pretty much reverted to "grid search" but still failed. Feeling dejected we found a dodgy food shop and got a snack. Dammit, I am now crawling into bed again at 3am.